security or withdraw diplomatic staff in the advance of a crisis, from central america, from car whom, to tunisia, from egypt to mali and others. while d.o.d. does not have primary responsibility for the security of u.s. diplomatic facilities around the world, we do work closely with the state department and support them as requested. in the months prior to the benghazi attack, as i've said, we had received from the intelligence community almost 300 reports on possible threats to american facilities around the world. over the course of the day on september 11, general dempsey and i received a number of reports of possible threats to u.s. facilities, including those in cairo, egypt, but there were no reports of imminent threats to u.s. personnel or facilities in benghazi. by our best estimate, the incident at the temporary mission facility in benghazi began at about 3:42 p.m. eastern daylight time on september 11. the embassy in tripoli was notified of the attacks almost immediately, and within 17 minutes of the initial reports, about 3:59 p.m., africom directed an unmanned, unmanned surveillance